Gaara's Journey Chapter Five
by Fluvial
Summary: Gaara is medically impaired and refuses to let his father help him.  Then when his father forgets his pain medication, Gaara loses it and starts destroying objects he knows his father loves.


8

The next crisis happened at 4:23 in the a.m. when Kish was sleeping. There was a small, eerie wail; it wasn't very loud, it was by the grace of God that Kish heard it at all. He sat up. "Huh?" he said to himself. Then his eyes opened all the way as he swung his legs across his bed. "Gaara's painkiller!"

He attempted to rush out of his room which nearly got him killed as he toppled over his collection of old carry-out food containers. "Oh geeze," he cried as he stumbled back up. "He already hates me!"

He came crashing into the main room already out of breath, but when he saw Gaara he stood stock still. Gaara was already looking at him with a malice that made his eyes glow in the dark.

"I – I'm sorry," Kish began. "I meant to set my clock."

Gaara groaned and dug his heel into the cushion.

"Right, um, I'll just go get it," he said as he shifted in and out of the maze and retrieved one of the bottles. "Right here it is Gaara," he said kneeling down by the couch. He pulled off the cork for him. "Just drink to that line there…"

Gaara snatched it from him and glugged it down.

"That was a little too much –"

"You did this on purpose."

"No," Kish promised. "No, I just –"

"Then why did you put it out of my reach?"

"I didn't, well I mean, I did, but it was only because of all this crap everywhere. I didn't want anybody knocking it over and breaking the bottles, so I put them up in the cupboard…"

Gaara turned his face away from him. "You said you'd set your clock," he said in a muffled voice.

"I really did mean to," Kish pleaded as he reached to pat Gaara's shoulder, but then decided not to. "Please, I never wanted you to be in so much pain."

Gaara's response was to turn his head back and slap his father across the face. Then he shoved the bottle back at Kish. "Put it on the coffee table," he hissed.

"Well, alright, I will but there's a bunch of stuff on there that can get knocked over –"

"Whose fault is that? Just pitch all the shit everywhere, no one would even notice. In fact, I have a better idea."

Before Kish could even answer, Gaara made his sand swirl around big gobs of the mess and crush them into dust.

"H-Hey, what are you doing?"

A smile of great pleasure spread across Gaara's face.

"Gaara no! Those are my good wine glasses! I drank from those when I was first chosen to be Kazekage!"

"All the better," he grinned as he smashed up a mirror and a spirit pouch.

"Gaara please! Riga the Elder gave those to me," he cried as he tried to grab the stuff from Gaara's sand.

This gave Gaara the delightful opportunity to crunch (but not destroy) Kish's fingers. Kish pulled them out and began to look angry.

"Now Gaara, you have a reason to be upset, but that's quite enough. We don't need any more of this temper tantrum."

The next thing Gaara's sand curled around an old jewelry box.

"That was my grandmother's!"

Gaara started to squeeze it, but then his sand suddenly stopped. Gaara paused in surprise. His father's gold dust was covering Gaara's sand and making it melt away. This brought Gaara at somewhat of a loss. He narrowed his eyes and folded his arms as much as his long incision would allow.

The jewelry box floated safely back into Kish's arms with the help of his gold. "I said that was enough," he told Gaara.

Gaara said nothing and looked away.

"I'm truly sorry I forgot your medicine, and I feel terrible that because of me you had to suffer like that, and I promise that it won't happen again. However," he continued as he took a step closer to his son, "That doesn't mean that you can throw a fit and wreck my stuff." Then Kish took a deep breath and debated what he wanted to say next in his head. Was it worth it? Would anything even come of it? He couldn't decide, but he ended up saying it anyway.

"I want an apology."

To his astonishment, Gaara looked down and said in a voice just above a whisper, "I'm sorry."

Kish didn't know how to react. "Uh," he said falling back a step, "You're welcome, I mean, apology accepted. So, uh, anyway, there's your potion bottle, just take it whenever you need to. Good night."

"I can't sleep."

"Right, well, have a nice rest while it's quiet. Would you like a book?"

"No."

"Want some paper? I know you like to draw."

Gaara shifted a bit. "How did you know I like to draw?"

"Well um," Kish started, he wasn't sure if he should say, "You used to draw me some pictures to put in my office."

Gaara shut his eyes tightly. Kish regretted telling the truth immediately.

"I never did that."

"You're right," he said quickly, "What was I thinking? Well, have a good rest."

That next morning, Temari made some eggs for everyone, Gaara managed to eat some of them. Kankuro and Kish were sitting at the table staring ahead. "So Dad," Kankuro spoke up. "What were you and Gaara fighting about last night?"

"You heard that?" Kish asked.

"How could we not," Temari said as she washed dishes by the sink. She was getting increasingly irritated as she ran out of room on the counters to put the clean ones. "The neighbors would have heard you too if we had any."

Kish slammed his head down on the table causing a mass of newspapers to fall all over him. "Then why didn't you two help me?"

"You're the only one who stands a chance against him, Dad," Temari replied with more than the usual contempt in her voice.

A few hours later, there was a knock on the door.

Kish, who had been lying across his couch steadily eating an entire bag of pork rinds, almost fell to the floor. "Was that a knock?" he asked.

"You fail at sound association too?" Gaara sneered.

"Oh woe is me!" Kish cried. "It's probably one of those elders saying there's another bill I forgot to pay," his eyes became watery. "I don't have any more to give them!"

Temari stood beside him. "What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know," he wheezed. "Just tell them I'm not here."

Temari opened the door, but it wasn't an elder. It was the Crazy-Old-Man-Who-Lives- Down-The-Bluff.

"May I come in?" he asked politely.

"Yes," replied Temari a little hesitantly. She opened the door as wide as she could for him.

"Kankuro," Kish whispered loudly. "Who did she just let in?"

"It's that doctor guy."

"What?" asked Kish sitting up.

By then the old man was already in the main room. He stood over Gaara. "I just wanted to see how you were getting along."

"Who are you?"

"Gaara," Temari said coming closer, "This is the man who saved your life."

Gaara's expression changed somewhat. "What is your name?"

The rest of his family squirmed with embarrassment as they realized that they had never asked what his name was.

"My name is Faria," he said and smiled at Gaara as if he were very fond of him. "I was wondering if I may have a look at your incision. I want to be sure that it is healing properly." He looked over at Kish, "You've already changed the bandages I presume?"

Kish became alarmed, "Well, you see, he doesn't always cooperate…"

Gaara clenched his fists, "I can change my own bandages."

"It requires movement that you are not capable of doing yet my young friend," Faria told him.

Gaara looked up at him again but didn't say anything.

Faria looked at Kish, "You must be that father, step over here please."

"Oh geeeeeze," Kish groaned as he painfully walked over looking as if someone was pushing him from behind.

Faria was in the process of pulling the jumpsuit down to Gaara's belly button. "As you can see, the bandage has a significant amount of blood on it."

Gaara tried not to look as he was a bit squeamish. The murders he performed masked any blood the victim emitted, so he wasn't used to it anyway.

Kish stared at the bandage.

"Now, I've brought some peroxide so they won't stick." Faria poured the peroxide on the bandages, then he undid a few of them. "Now," he said motioning to Kish, "You try."

"Oh, no, I better not. I can see that you're really good at it."

Faria motioned again, "Tis true, but you'll be spending a lot more time with him than I will. Come along."

Kish came over uneasily. Gaara stared up at him defiantly.

Faria could see that there was a great amount of friction between Gaara and his father, but he did not question it. In fact, he had a theory that wasn't far off the mark. But he didn't think it prudent to intervene.

Kish tried to pour a little peroxide. "Ok Gaara, I'm just going to…" he carefully picked at the ends of one of the bandages, "Let's just try to see if I can get this off of you…"

Naturally the bandage stuck, Gaara flinched, cried out, and hit his father with a sand blast that sent him flying across the room taking several piles down with him.

Faria didn't look the least disturbed. He took out a tube of petroleum jelly. "For stubborn stops like that I use a bit of this," he explained as he carefully rubbed some of the jelly on the spot Kish tried to pull.

Kish tried again, but it ended in the same result.

"The hell with this!" He roared, getting off the ground. "Let's just make have him two or three times as much of the pain potion again."

"We can't keep knocking him out, Dad," Temari put in. "We can't keep giving the shukaku opportunities to eat at him."

"Shukaku?" Faria asked. "What is this Shukaku?"


End file.
